Serena Williams admits that she thought breastfeeding daughter Alexis Ohanian Jnr would make her skinnier.

The 23-time Grand Slam champion made the admission ahead of Wimbledon which begins on Monday in West London.

According to USA today, Serena admitted that she thought that breastfeed would allow her to lose weight.

“It was interesting because all these articles, over pop culture, you hear when you breastfeed you lose weight, you’re so thin,” she said. “That wasn’t happening to me.

The younger sister of Venus Williams added that while she planned to only breastfeed Alexis for three months, she kept going until her daughter was ten-months-old.

Once she made the decision to stop breastfeeding, Serena says she had a ‘talk’ with her daughter to discuss the change to her feeding routine, “I literally sat Olympia in my arms and I talked to her about it and we prayed about it. I said "look, mommy has to stop and mommy has to do this". I cried a little bit not as much as I thought I would.”

After that Serena says that she lost 10 pounds in a week and just kept dropping. “What I've learned is that everybody is different – no matter how much I worked out, it didn't work for me. I lost ten pounds in a week when I stopped. I just kept dropping,” she said.

She then shared why she felt it was important to share this with the world.

“I wanted to say that so women out there know that’s not true (about losing weight). Everyone takes things different. I think it’s important for us to share that message.”

According to the World Health Organization, “Infants should be exclusively breastfed – i.e. receive only breast milk – for the first six months of life to achieve optimal growth, development and health.”

Meanwhile Serena’s husband, and Reddit founder, Alexis Ohanian has paid tribute to her and the way she handles motherhood along with her athletic ambitions.

Speaking to the Sunday Times, he said about his wife of almost one year, “She's always had this resilience and toughness, mentally and physically, but now she has this "mom strength button" that she pushes and it's just so powerful.”